“You’re not trying hard enough.”
“The system works if you work it.”
“If you have faith, this will help.”
My therapist and I glared at each other when he said, “I don’t think you’re trying.” Actually, I glared, and I think he tried to have sympathetic therapist face. We were maybe on our third session. I was mostly seeing him to get a letter for surgery, but also happened to bring up my depression. It was pretty clear to me in that situation that he had no clue what he was talking about. He didn’t know me well enough to know if I was trying or not, and even if he did, what a rude thing to say.
Fast forward fifteen years, and I’m taking a class on managing ME/CFS (myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome). I wasn’t noticing a difference, and the facilitator suggested that for those of us who weren’t seeing a change, we may need to do even less than we were doing and may also need to give ourselves more time to see the change.
In both situations, someone else was telling me that what they were suggesting would be helpful and that I wasn’t yet following the suggestions well enough to get the benefits. In one situation though, the person was wrong, and in one, they were right.
The idea that we can be whatever we want if we just work hard enough is pervasive in the United States. If we work hard enough, we can make enough money. If we do therapy well enough, we can be happy. If we follow the right regimen, our bodies will function without pain. But that’s rarely the case.
How do we discern when to keep trying and when something isn’t working? How do we figure out that even if something would work, that it might not be worth it?
The sometimes frustrating and sometimes glorious truth of it all is that everyone is different and there’s no one way to do most things. This means that what worked for someone else might not work for us AND that there are things that have been demonstrated to work for a lot of people.
I don’t have clear answers for how to always know if something someone tries is worth continuing or not, but I can share some of the ways that I try to discern what’s worth continuing for me and what isn’t.
I have found that these questions are helpful for lots of different kinds of healing or well-being practices in my life – whether it’s mental health, healing from trauma, physical health, or coping with disabilities.
- Does the strategy make sense?
- I like to know the why behind things. Why is this supposed to be helpful? Sometimes understanding the why can help me determine that an approach doesn’t make sense for a specific situation. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, for example, is about reframing thoughts and behaviors. Knowing that can help me understand why it may not be a good fit for working through complex trauma.
- Are the claims “too good to be true”?
- I’m skeptical of basically anything that claims to work for everyone, even more so if people are blamed when the strategy doesn’t work for them. Do people say, “if it’s not working for you, then you aren’t doing it right?” Is there pressure to keep trying no matter what? Do advocates for this approach dismiss any evidence that the approach isn’t for everyone?
Does it reflect my values?
- It can be difficult to figure out what values are behind different healing strategies – from medications to therapeutic approaches – from herbs to group supports – values are often unspoken.
- My values include: our worth is not determined by our work. Community and connection can be healing. Difference is good. Oppression is bad. (Okay, those are very simple ways of saying complex things.) But knowing this means that if a treatment strategy is giving vibes of “work harder” or hustle culture, or if it’s encouraging people to assimilate, or if it’s founded in racist or colonized approaches, that it’s not a useful strategy to me.
- Is someone trying to make money off of this?
- We live in a capitalist society and people need to make their livings. That said, if an approache seems more like a marketing scheme or a program that only works if you spend a lot of money on it, then I’m skeptical.
- What do others say?
- I’m skeptical of approaches that only have positive feedback. Not necessarily people – for example if a specific provider has great reviews, that is a positive, but if everything on a website says that this one type of therapy is perfect and always works – then I’m wary.
- It can also be helpful if there’s information about who finds an approach helpful. Does this seem helpful for people with specific experiences? For example, EMDR is often considered helpful for processing traumatic experiences, but it’s not considered helpful for people with strong dissociative experiences or diagnoses.
- What feels possible for me?
- Sometimes there are healing approaches that could be beneficial, but it’s just not the right time or place for them. For example, EMDR may not be the right approach if you aren’t in a space to process past events. EMDR can also be exhausting, so while it has helped some people with chronic illnesses, it may not be suitable for everyone – especially those with pre-existing fatigue.
- For me, really, highly specific approaches are just not going to happen. While I’m already skeptical of some of these for the above reasons, I also know I can’t commit to them. I won’t be able to follow a process that involves a million supplements, making fresh smoothies, and taking time away from work.
- Is it a cult or a multi-level marketing scheme?
- Sadly, it seems like there are more and more wellness cults or pyramid schemes these days. It can be difficult to determine what wellness approaches are community-based alternatives to more mainstream strategies, and which are schemes – as both sometimes are outside of the mainstream and appeal to people who other approaches haven’t worked for.
- Is this strategy only offered by one person or company?
- This can be a sign that something is off. A healing approach, like a form of therapy, ritual, or medication, is likely to be offered by a number of different practitioners. While each individual provider will have their own unique approach, if they are the only one who offers something, see if there is a reason for that.
Healing, wellness, caring for ourselves – whatever terms we use – the approaches can be difficult, changing, and may or may not be effective. Something that works for a while may stop working. We may never experience “wellness” or “health” – we may always have trauma, pain, disability, depression, or many other things happening. There are, however, often strategies that help us to live our lives in a way that feels a bit better for us – maybe more true to ourselves, maybe with less physical pain, or maybe with less emotional pain.
Developing our own process of discernment around healing strategies can help us to figure out when we want to keep at something or not as we figure out what works for us.